Overview

Principal Investigator: Dr. Celeste M. Condit
Co-Investigators: Dr. Tina M. Harris, Dr. Lijiang Shen
Research Assistants: (Lead) Marita Gronnvoll, Jamie Landau, Lanelle Wright, Nicole Hurt, Bethany Keeley, Angela Nowicki

 Background and Overview of the Study:

• Genetic testing for common diseases is predicted to become widespread. 
• Some evidence suggests that if people think genes cause health problems they also think those health problems cannot be avoided.   Because low-income people may already have high levels of fatalism, this belief may be particularly problematic.
• Thinking about genes as interacting with behaviors may lower fatalism.

 

Research Goals and Design

• Our first goal is to understand whether lay people understand genes as interacting with behaviors.  We also wanted to see if messages about genes make people more fatalistic.
• Our second goal is to develop messages that teach the idea that genes and behaviors interact.
• Our third goal is to compare the impact of messages based on gene-behavior interaction to messages emphasizing other kinds of genetic causation.
• We are using interviews, surveys, and experimental comparisons.

 

What We Are Learning

• Most people believe both genes and behaviors influence health risks.
• When people think about genes, they think of them mostly in a deterministic way.
• To avoid fatalistic conclusions, however, people switch from thinking about genes to thinking about behavior.
• In many contexts, when people hear messages about genes and behavior they tend to ignore the gene talk and emphasize the behavior.